Home > $75 Mllion Boost For California Stem Cell Scientists: Assembly Speaker says California on the path to cures--State now largest source of funding for embryonic stem cell research

$75 Mllion Boost For California Stem Cell Scientists: Assembly Speaker says California on the path to cures--State now largest source of funding for embryonic stem cell research

Posted: March 16, 2007

LOS ANGELES, March 16, 2007 – Just a month after approving nearly $45 million for embryonic stem cell research, California’s stem cell agency authorized another $75.7 million in additional funds for established scientists at 12 non-profit and academic institutions.

The 29-member Independent Citizens Oversight Committee (ICOC), governing board of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), today approved 29 Comprehensive Research Grants for approximately $74.6 million over four years, to accomplished stem cell investigators at academic and non-profit research centers throughout the state. The grants were selected from 70 applications from researchers at 23 institutions, who sought more than $175 million in CIRM funding.

“This time of the year new life and new hope seem to be everywhere you look,” said Fabian Núñez, Speaker of the California State Assembly. “With these new grants, California is continuing on the path of turning the hope and promise of stem cell research into the reality of therapies and cures for millions of Californians and people across the globe. The California spirit – the perseverance, creativity and resourcefulness that has made us a leader on everything from gold mining in the 19th Century to fighting global warming in this one -- is fully present in our stem cell research teams. With today’s grants California shows we are again blazing the trail.”

Speaker Núñez joined Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Robert N. Klein, chairman of the ICOC, at a press conference to review the latest research grants.

“As of today, California is the largest and most stable source of funding for human embryonic stem cell research in the world,” Klein said. “The scientific projects proposed for our third set of grants are very strong, and it’s clear that there is an abundance of scientific opportunities for the state’s investments. We are off to an extraordinary start towards fulfilling the mandate of 7 million California voters, and the hopes of patients and families worldwide.”

The Comprehensive Grants approved today will support mature, ongoing studies on human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) by scientists with a record of accomplishment in the field. They were designed for investigators with well-developed expertise in hESC research or in a closely-related field to pursue new directions in hESCs based on their current research.

“These grants provide substantial support to a pool of very distinguished researchers in human embryonic stem cell research,” declared Zach W. Hall, Ph.D., CIRM’s President and Chief Scientific Officer. “These grants are larger than the Leon J. Thal SEED grants approved in February and extend over four years rather than two. Accordingly, our reviewers had higher expectations and more rigorous standards for judging this set of applications.

“The ICOC has approved a very well-balanced portfolio of research proposals, including those aimed at understanding stem cell differentiation and identifying new ways of obtaining hESCs, and many that target specific diseases,” Hall said. “Combined with our training and SEED grants, the CIRM is now funding embryonic stem cell research in more than 100 California laboratories.”

“We focused our initial grants on human embryonic stem cells specifically,” Klein said, “because human embryonic stem cell research receives minimal funding from the federal government, and even those funds are restricted to lines of questionable value. Going forward, we will support a diverse range of stem cell research projects. There are a number of California institutions that have strong programs in adult and other stem cells, for example, that are just beginning to build embryonic stem cell capabilities. Many of these institutions may be prominent names in future grant awards. We need them to be fully engaged in this project, if we’re going to achieve our objectives. Fortunately, we have 10 years and $3 billion to build a strong program encompassing all of California’s research institutions.”

Like the Leon J. Thal SEED grants, the Comprehensive Grants will fund a broad range of projects, including:

A study of how chemical modification of DNA in hESCs impacts nerve formation and the ability of stem cells to repair brain damage caused by stroke (UCLA)

Development of new ways of deriving hESCs and investigating the special capabilities of newly-derived human cell lines. (UCSF)

A proposal to develop neural cellular models of Parkinson’s disease and Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS) that could be used to screen chemical libraries for novel drugs and to develop preclinical models of human disease (Salk Institute)

Building tools to better isolate heart and blood cells from differentiated populations of hESCs (Stanford)

A proposal to optimize the creation of liver cells for transplantation, and be able to monitor their in-vivo fate non-invasively (UC Davis)

A study of molecular mechanisms regulating hESC survival, focused on a very specific and promising class of growth factors (UC Irvine)

The ICOC approved Comprehensive Research Grants to the following researchers (Note: the dollar amounts shown are the four-year budgets requested by each applicant and are subject to review and revision by CIRM, prior to the issuance of grant awards):

An in vitro and in vivo comparison among three different human hepatic stem cell populations

$2,504,614

Total $74,587,642

Totals for each institution are listed below:

Institution

Comprehensive Grants

Amount

UC San Francisco

7

$17,395,875

Stanford University

6

$15,209,557

UC San Diego

3

$7,528,380

UC Irvine

3

$7,436,370

Burnham Institute for Medical Research

2

$6,071,998

UC Los Angeles

2

$5,033,444

UC Davis

2

$4,761,654

The J. David Gladstone Institutes

1

$3,164,000

Salk Institute for Biological Studies

1

$2,879,210

CHA Regenerative Medicine Institute

1

$2,556,066

Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles

1

$2,551,088

Total

29

$74,587,642

The ICOC also completed its review of the Leon J. Thal SEED Grant applications. Nearly $45 million was approved in February, to 72 scientists at 20 institutions. Today the ICOC approved two additional grants to the following researchers (Note: the dollar amounts shown are the two-year budgets requested by each applicant and are subject to review and revision by CIRM, prior to the issuance of grant awards):

Application #

PI

Institution

Title

Amount

RS1-00308-1

Didier Stainier

University of California, San Francisco

Endodermal differentiation of human ES cells

$635,242

RS1-00247-1

Frank LaFerla

University of California, Irvine

Development of human ES cell lines as a model system for Alzheimer disease drug discovery

$492,750

Total SEED grants $1,127,992

The first scientific grants approved under the Stem Cell Research and Cures Act totaled $37.5 million, and were awarded in April 2006, to train 169 pre-doctoral, post-doctoral, and clinical fellows at 16 non-profit and academic research institutions. With today’s decision, the ICOC has now approved more than $158 million for research grants at 23 California institutions: